Fingertips to fingertips

Sometimes you read or hear something to which no amount of grandstanding or slang-slinging can do justice, something that absolutely and with no mercy kicks yr emotional equilibrium to the curb, bereft of breath and words. You are following along, doing yr laundry, perhaps, until suddenly the narrative twists, the story being told is yr own and you are left standing still in the middle of yr bedroom, holding a matchless sock and sobbing.

Catalina Puente's WNYC Radio Rookies segment is that kind of thing. Please, whoever you are--listen to it. It might not be about what you think it's going to be about. It will be worth the 12 minutes and 43 seconds, I promise.

Simons say

By the time of rave I had read Deleuze and Guattari, and it all just seemed to genuinely be there in the music, at the heart of how it operated. The idea of rhizomatic networks applied to the world of white labels and pirate radio and record shops serving as hubs. And also the dementia involved. Deleuze and Guattari came out of the idea that normal life screws you up and that madness is a sane response to our civilization.

If there was ever any doubt that Simon Reynolds knows his shit, it's been Cheney'd out of the quail covey by his Seattle Weekly Jukebox Jury with Andy Battaglia. The name-that-tune format really lets Reynolds shine, especically when they're listening to Phuture's "Spank Spank" and he pounces, "Is this an acid-house track? Phuture? Something about the hi-hats..." Or when they put on Gang of Four and he deadpans, "This is very much about Antonio Gramsci." Which it totes is, it's just, y'know, weird to hear somebody say it so declaratively. He diagnoses Arctic Monkeysitis as a kind of perennial Beatles nostalgia, observing, "the core music-press readership is always looking for a four-man guitar band from Britain that reflects back their lives to them in a slightly heroic way." Notice the "man" part of the equation; do (boy) critics get jazzed about Electrelane and the Gossip and even the Sleater in quite the same way they do about the Monkeys and Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand? Maybe sometimes. But the downward pull of the girl ghetto always lurks, fierce and relentless--like Scylla, or Ann Coulter. The default setting for "new genius band" is still "men."

While we're on the subject of glasses-wearing British whiz-crits named Simon, I'ma get something off my chest. Remember when Perfect Sound Forever interviewed Simon Frith? That was the one that went like this:

PSF: You've talked about generalizations of record collecting habits where girls are 'dupes' and boys are 'cognoscenti.' How do you find this so?

SF: ...One of the few generalizations you can make is that if a boy likes a record, they'll [sic] go out and buy all of them (by an artist). You find that when boys buy a Bon Jovi record for instance, they have to go out and buy all the Bon Jovi records, whereas girls may have two...And that just kind of struck me through a lot of anecdotal experience- just to hear how girls listen to music, that they're not collectors like boys are. And that's something with a very long history and that goes across any number of cultures too. Being collectors and cognoscenti seems to be a very masculine attribute. How you actually explain that, I absolutely have no idea--what sort of cultural or psychology things are at play and such.

Apart from the fact that I do not appreciate being called a dupe because of what is (not) between my legs, I am not stepping to Simon F. I know it's just a generalization, and I understand the point he was trying to make. However, I feel obligated to stress that I do not fit this pattern. I can kick the collector/cognoscenti steez any day of the week, and I am a girl. My sister is this way, too. And I can think of at least one "cultural or psychology thing" at play--try gender socialization. Kids are brilliant at conforming to what is expected of them. If girls grow up being assured that they're weak, or nurturers, or dupes, that's what they're liable to become. As for Frith's later point that "girls are more likely to have female acts in their collection than boys are," yeah, I suppose--except for the most collectorly dude I know, who shops for 7 inches the way most people buy bread and whose house is practically constructed out of rare vinyl. Said dude's mantra is six close variants of "BOY BANDS ARE BORING" and he quizzes me on Raincoats trivia when we are supposed to be working. Whose anecdotal experience is Frith privileging here? How many girls have to be collectors before the generalization begins to break down?

P.S. So's not to be exclusive: Simon Price is also lovely.

Interrobangin'

Julianne Shepherd nails it in Interrobang:

"YouTube is also this insane cultural tool. It not only illuminates certain truths about moments in music history, but also offers this intimate window into how other people in the world are relating to the current moment-- people who you'd never otherwise know but for the webbertron's perpetually amazing global connectivity. For instance, who is this guy, and how does one end up live-popping in a clothing store? Or these dudes, chillaxing in a V formation? I don't know, but I think I would like to be all of their friends."

Take the money/ leave the box/ everybody's on Top of the Pops

YouTube's reign of terror is merciless. I can't go anywhere without brainstorming bands to search for when I get home. Two nights ago I actually sat up in bed and gasped, "SUZI QUATRO!" The live performance trough appears to be bottomless, even after you've sifted out the 75,000 clips that are Mariah Carey and porn. A good bet is to search for Old Grey Whistle Test and Top of the Pops, but be warned--you may be forcibly dragged from yr compy months later, deranged & dehydrated, screaming, "NOOO! I HAVEN'T CHECKED TO SEE IF THEY'VE GOT X-RAY SPEX YET!"

Some of my favorites:

The Adverts -- Gary Gilmore's Eyes
Gaye Advert's black nail polished bass wizardry blinds the eyes and burns the heart.

Human League -- Sound of the Crowd
The fog! The hair! The single stabbing finger keyboard-playing! A tranny disco fever dream for the ages. Words cannot express how beautiful this is. Get in line now/ get in line now!

The Kinks -- Autumn Almanac
Toasted, buttered currant buns; my poor rheumatic back; yes, yes, yes, it's my autumn almanac! Ray Davies lifts suit jacket, wiggles bum; Dave grins like he's just drunk a quart of Skittles. You'll get six cavities while watching.

Queen -- Killer Queen
Whatevs, whatevs, Freddie's the shit, even lipsynching. Fastidious and precise...if you're that way inclined.

The Rezillos -- Flying Saucer Attack
Four-way tie between this, "Destination Venus," the deathly meta "Top of the Pops" (performed on show of same name, natch) and the coked-out art school wankery of "(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures." Boy-girl vocal caramel a la John & Exene, plus guitarist nailing the perfect pogo. Karen O has obvs. seen the tapes.

Altered Images -- A Day's Wait, Insects
In heaven, all kindergarten classes are taught by Claire Grogan. And everyone dances just like her, too.

Turn on the Brit bands

So the Arctic Monkeys aren't as bad as all that. Maybe it's only because I've just now eaten an enormous bowl of Count Chocula, the crack cocaine of breakfast cereals, but honestly, they could be worse. I enjoy the way Alex Turner straps his guitar way up under his armpit, as if he could care less about assuming the requisite "my axe is my phallus and I wear it down by my knees" pose of rock boy machoism. His playing doesn't resemble wanking off so much as frantically grating a wedge of cheese. I also like the fact that he rhymes "Capulets" with "DJ sets," and that the Monkeys will be hitting up the Hull Ice Arena for their spring 2006 tour. Perhaps they will perform on the rink itself, in reference to their name? Or at least hijack a zamboni for the encore?

Like it or not, we had all better get used to the Arctic Monkeys, because they are the new Oasis. That's what everyone has been saying, so it must be true. The Subways are the new Arctic Monkeys, as well as the old Art Brut, who were the new Futureheads, who may or may not have once been Oasis. Everyone is Bloc Party.

Personally, I miss the days when you could just call somebody Joy Division and be done with it. Those were simpler, saner times. Dammit, Interpol, where are you? I think some more Count Chocula is in order.

Quiet mob/ noisy recluse

THE PINES
with special guests SPAGHETTI WESTERN STRING CO.
Cedar Cultural Center
Friday, February 17, 8 pm
$10 advance/$12 day of show/$8 student rush

Like October's Quiet Mob release party in reverse. This time the Pines headline, towing a brand new EP of their own. They are deep and dark and shiverful, like early Dylan but emphatically un-Oberst. Plus, SWSC have new songs that are not to be missed--I have heard living room previews.

And if you like you can buy the ring

"It got very treacherous in the end, the flowers thing, because the stage was so goddamn slippy...you know, I'd be wearing moccasins and you'd be getting down with your bad self, and the next thing, whoa! Bang! A tulip!"

-Johnny Marr on the unique challenges of Smiths shows

Youtube has a Smiths clip up with more dreamy concert montages than you can shake a daffodil at. It's from some British VH1 rip-off called "I Love 1984," but unlike their American counterparts, the Brit writers and music people herded in to do the commentary are not bumbling, unfunny ass-clowns. This is great, because it means that instead of Michael Ian Black drooling we get Tony Wilson & Friends being classy and making comprehensible points. We also get Shaun Duggan, the Smiths teenage superfan whose play based on "William, It Was Really Nothing" was produced and performed in London in 1984. The BBC smelled drama and somehow induced Moz to actually show up and interview the poor kid, and said interview is the grand finale of the Youtube clip.

I dunno what the whole thing is like in context, but as is it's gothic and weirdly sexual, with Duggan looking like he desperately wants to climb into Morrissey's lap. I'm not complaining, it's fucking fantastic, but where are they? Why is the set so dark? And was that really a close-up of Morrissey licking his lips? Moz asks if fame is important to Duggan, and he quips, ""Yeah, I mean, I don't want to die and be no one, do you know what I mean?" There is the briefest of pauses before Moz breathes, "I do." But in that pause there is Morrissey, a teenage superfan in his own right, barricaded in his bedroom in his mum's house, sanctifying every inch of wall space with James Dean and the New York Dolls and trying to figure out how to turn himself into a pop star. Yes, darling, he knows.

Mozzer also shows up to head-scratching effect in New York Doll, the bizonkers documentary on Dolls bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane. He's totes eloquent and earnest, almost painfully so, but for some reason the director insists on shooting him exclusively in an eyebrows-to-chin close-up. Which is odd, because all of the other Dolls genius testifyers (Chrissie Hynde, Clem Burke, Mick Jones, Bob Geldof) are shown sitting several feet away from the camera. Maybe he's body-conscious and agreed to appear in the film only on the condition that he be shot in close-up, or else the director thought it would make him seem more mysterious and savior-like (he masterminds the Dolls reunion). Either way, the result is some seriously intense heaping screenfuls of Moz face.

You'll be able to see all of him, presumably, at SXSW next month when he does a special combo interview and music showcase. If you're a starving wallflower like me and will be sitting that one out, read this charming essay instead. And let's all of us read Saint Morrissey again--it's still the stunningest Mozological survey yet produced.

P.S. Dear God, this is the cutest thing ever.

Pogo Princess Girl Band Quiz 'N Contest

Test yr music smarts. If you get 7 of 7 correct answers w/o cheating, e-mail Pogo headquarters (dancingvioletsnail@yahoo.com) with yr address and you will receive a prize.

1. Which of the following is not an actual girl band?
A) Bella and the Bottomfeeders
B) Goldie and the Gingerbreads
C) Doris and the Dee-Lighters
D) Martha and the Muffins

2. "It's garage pop in clean overalls...And like Debbie Harry, Nikki is no slouch in the looks department -- ooooh, that pout! "

The previous quotation, from a review of Nikki & the Corvettes' self-titled album, was written
A) in 1979
B) in 2000
C) by Greil Marcus
D) by an alcoholic donkey

3. Tracy + the Plastics is
A) The world's leading manufacturer of disposable silverware
B) Three women
C) One woman
D) Two women, a man and three robots

4. In a 1999 interview with Rolling Stone, David Bowie described 70s super girl-group Fanny as
A) "about as talented as my cat's bum"
B) "one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time"
C) "tremendously indebted to Space Oddity"
D) "a bit better than the Spice Girls"

5. Laura Molina was the lead singer for
A) Tiger Lily
B) Tiger Trap
C) Tigerella
D) "Tiger" brand stain remover commercials

6. Influential punk phenoms Kleenex (later LiliPUT) were also
A) Swiss
B) amateur mimes
C) actually men
D) the Mo-dettes' secret side project

7. What was Cibo Matto's first full-length record called, and what were all of its songs about?
A) Ladies, Women & Girls; skateboarding
B) Odyshape; origami
C) Stereotype A; pets
D) Viva! La Woman; food

SCORING
1-3 correct answers
You looked in She's A Rebel.

4-6 correct answers
You are Gillian Gaar.

7 correct answers
You are Gillian Gaar's mom.

ANSWERS: 1) C; 2) B; 3) C; 4) B; 5) A; 6) A; 7) D

SCUM/Solanas FAQ

Writing about the Friedan legacy for Salon, Joan Walsh offers,

"I'm not old enough to judge the battles of the day with firsthand knowledge or memory, but certainly [Friedan] was wrong about some things (she called lesbianism "a lavender menace" and thought if feminism embraced gay rights all feminists would be labeled lesbians), right about others (she threatened to sue when New York NOW president Ti-Grace Atkinson took up the cause of Valerie Solanis [sic], deranged founder of SCUM, the "Society to Cut Up Men," [sic] who shot Andy Warhol after accusing him of exploiting her in 1968)."

A few observations.

1. Valerie Solanas' last name is S-O-L-A-N-A-S. Kind of like the breakdown in Hollaback Girl. It is considered good journalistic practice to spell people's names correctly when you call them "deranged" in a national publication. Even if they did suffer from childhood abuse and paranoid schizophrenia, and are dead. Especially then.

2. The acronym SCUM stands for Society for Cutting Up Men.

3. SCUM was not, as the sentence implies, a functioning organization. Rather, it was an extended literary device intended to provoke attention and debate (think A Modest Proposal). Solanas never seriously planned to destroy the male sex. As she told the Village Voice in 1977, "It's hypothetical. No, hypothetical is the wrong word. It's just a literary device. There's no organization called SCUM."

4. Solanas did not say anything about men in the SCUM Manifesto that men haven't been saying about women for thousands of years. Substitute the word "female" for "male" at any point and it reads like mainstream ancient Greek, Medieval, Renaissance and even Enlightenment philosophy. Is SCUM more "deranged" than John Knox's 1558 "The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women," which states, "[Women's] sight...is but blindness; their strength, weakness; their counsel, foolishness; and judgment, frenzy"? It's anyone's call. At least Solanas, as Lili Taylor stressed on Saturday night at the Walker, had a sense of humor, which is more than can be said for either Knox or Filippo Marinetti, whose 1909 Futurist Manifesto called for the glorification of war ("the world's only hygiene"), the defeat of feminism and a general "scorn for woman."

Solanas didn't start this game. She just played it from the opposite side:

"Direct thought is not an attribute of femininity. In this, women are now centuries behind man." -Thomas Edison
"Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify, and filled with a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is psychically passive." -Solanas

"Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property." -Napoleon Bonaparte
"The male is docile and easily led, easily subjected to the domination of any female who cares to dominate him. The male, in fact, wants desperately to be led by females, wants Mama in charge, wants to abandon himself to her care." -Solanas

"When a woman becomes a scholar there is usually something wrong with her sexual organs." -Friedrich Nietzsche
"[The male's] responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations." -Solanas

"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another." -H.L. Mencken
"Love can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent groovy females, since friendship is based upon respect, not contempt." -Solanas

Occult empathy

Always suspected, finally confirmed: Lili Taylor is the Mirah of film. Feminist, independent, uncompromising, inspiring as hell, realer than reals. Her talk show guest crossed-legs pose quickly melted into a hands-in-lap, legs-folded-at-ankles posture of polite attention, which also alternated with the kind of leaning-forward, both-feet-on-the-ground, "fuck ladylike" stance that betokens serious thinkery. She giggled a lot and was nervous and excited and awkward in the most endearing of ways and used the word 'autonomy.' TWICE. She posited a seachange in the marketability of indie movies around '96 and '97, just post-I Shot Andy Warhol/ Girls Town, but decried the reduction of an entire artistic philosophy of independence to a financial formula wherein you go low-budget only to maximize profit. She also made it pretty clear that from now on she is exclusively interested in taking on small projects that will probably never make money, because she is in this for the art and the honesty, not so much the commerce.

And of course, the heart-stealer moment: she said, "I am a feminist." When she did, my breath caught in my throat, because I swear, it is like J.M. Barrie's fairy-killing in reverse; every time somebody says "I believe in feminism," there's a feminist somewhere out there who comes to life.

Speaking of feminist heroes: my lady Becky Smith sends the arrow into the bullseye, through the target, around the world like Superman and into the bullseye again.

Give me 15 cents, and I'll give you a dirty word

Lili Taylor talks with B. Ruby Rich tonight at the Walker. It is going to be like Inside the Actors' Studio, only feminist, and not stupid. Hopefully somebody will bring up Jungian archetypes during the Q&A and we will debate their potential for lady-positive reclamation for six hours.

Please don't kill the freshman

I have been OKed to present at EMP Pop Con this year. This is rather like the Yankees letting a 5-year-old tee-ball novice pinch-hit for a couple of innings. I am very, very scared--the kind of scared that keeps company with rashes and cold sweats--but hope that it will all turn out like it did when I was 11 and did ballet. I was a mouse in The Tales of Beatrix Potter, and every night before I had to go onstage for the big mouse dance I would cower in the wings and wish that I was somewhere, anywhere else where I wouldn't have to run around in front of hundreds of people in a mouse head that made it impossible to see where I was going. But then, when my part was over and I could just hang out at stage left and clean my whiskers while the adults danced, the blood would rush to my head and I would get the most intense natural high imaginable and scream internally, "THIS IS FUCKING GREAT," only without the "fucking," because I was 11.

So maybe EMP will be like that. Me, dancing blindly in a mouse head. And then euphoria. Here is what I will be cleaning my whiskers about:

Truly Outrageous: Towards A Defense of Jem & the Holograms

Part response to the MTV explosion, part transparent marketing gimmick for a line of Barbie-like dolls by Hasbro, the animated television series Jem & the Holograms debuted in 1985 and aired in syndication until 1987. The show followed the adventures of Jerrica Benton, a plucky Nancy Drew-Kylie Minogue hybrid, as she and her all-girl band the Holograms recorded music, toured, and sparred with rival girl band the Misfits.

Jem & the Holograms provided a generation of kids growing up in the 80s with a template for understanding female musicianship. Not surprisingly, this template had more to do with fashion and magical earrings than it did with the labor of songwriting and performance. But where it failed to delineate a practical guide for musical production, Jem succeeded in conjuring up a unique world in which women were the primary producers of music, and men their villainized or inept supporting players. In my paper and through analysis of video clips, I examine the politics of this world and its influence on the ways we think about “girl bands” today. I also assess the show’s equation of musical (and female) success with materialism in order to test the limits of a feminist reading. Finally, by situating Jem as a response to the popularity of real groups like the Go-Gos, the Bangles, and Bananarama, I argue that the series deserves recognition not only as a guilty pleasure, but as an historical site of engagement with the changing musical landscape of the 1980s.

Just another clip about women in rock (huh!)

Mairead scooped me on this one, but in addition to the "Typical Girls" video, You Tube also has an amazing excerpt from a German documentary about women in rock, featuring lots of Slits performance footage and Viv Albertine being incisive and awesome. Visibly exasperated by the never-ending "How does being women affect yr music?" and "What is it like to be a woman musician?" line of questioning, Viv finally gongs the nail on the head: "We are fucking women making music, that's all there is to say about it."

The filmmakers are obviously big supporters of female musicians, but the sum total of the interview clips is sad and a half--sad because the Slits shouldn't have had to talk about this in 1979, and I definitely shouldn't have to write about it now, 27 years later. While the inherent ability of men to make music has never been considered worthy of scrutiny, the imperative to explain female musicianship is deathless. It is explored and questioned, defended and denied as if it were Einstein's theory of special relativity or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle rather than the simple physical act of a woman playing an instrument. Why is this something that necessitates study? We're people, not particles traveling at the speed of light in a vacuum.

I don't live here, I'm from Fanville

It is an odd thing to suddenly find yrself on the performing side of the audience-musician divide when it is not yr native province. It's weird over there. There's too much empty space, and that mike stand in front of my nose just cries out to be jostled, and why are all of these people staring at me so terribly, terribly squarely? If their bangs weren't covering half their faces then maybe I could tell whether everyone was having an okay time or not, but as it is I am too mired in show-fright, so I keep my eyes on the ground and study shoes--boots and Converse, mostly, with rusty buckle and duct tape accents. High-Top Purple Cons seems to be enjoying herself, stomping a bit, but Knee-High Mukluks looks bored, and Ratty Sneakers clearly wishes he had stayed at home. After bumping the mike stand for the seventh time I hang my head and intensify an already strong-ass respect for the people who do this every night, who endure the sound checks and staring to make the art they believe in.

********

"Some people are born with the certainty that they own sound or volume; that the lexicon of rock music is theirs to borrow from, to employ, to interpret. For them, it might be nothing to move around a stage, to swagger, to sing in front of people, to pick up a guitar, to make records. I set out from a place where I never assumed that those were acceptable choices or that I could ever be anything but an accessory to rock'n'roll. Coming out of a tradition that historically didn't allow women much of a voice, then finding myself helping to create a sound that filled an entire room, that reached into every person in that room, that is a power I had to learn. I needed to try it on before I could call it mine. I had to find a means to make it my own."

-Carrie Brownstein, "More Rock, Less Talk," from This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project.

I can even sort of play guitar

Jessica Delfino's White Box Session over at The Brink is six flavors of genius, including the kind with the caramel center. Yes, it's a throwaway joke song, but it taps into a very real, very powerful and very American anxiety about anonymity. What proof of worth and success does a post-Warhol, reality show-saturated culture demand other than celebrity? If you are a halfway intelligent person with any kind of talent whatsoever, this culture assures us, you are a failure if you are not famous.

P.S. Dancing With Myself does not advocate the pre-meditated killing of people, animals or kiwi fruits--famous or otherwise.

Pogo music showcase!

Something old


The Gymslips
Rockin with the Renees + the Silly Egg EP (Abstract)

In 1983 NME called them "hilarious cartoon deadbeat sleaze," but when Paula Richards sings, "We're the Renees, here we come/ 1-2-3 and up yer bum!" she means it. The Gymslips were like the British Tuscadero, or Gina Birch's little sisters, or the Go-Gos before their record deal, sugar bath and makeover. IRS never let Belinda Carlisle sneer, "Get drunk! Get smashed! Get pissed! Get fat!" and, "Some boys just don't understand/ that some girls do it pretty good," meaning, um, doing it. This is Oi! at its playful, non-fascist best, exploring advice columns, plastic surgery, Barbara Cartland's mansion and the comforts of pie 'n mash ("it's working class!").

Something new


The Tuna Helpers - I'll Have What She's Having (Mimicry)

Tori? Siouxsie? Throwing Muses? Coming up with sound-a-likes for the Tuna Helpers is like watching the State of the Union address; you could do it, but what would be the point? Besides, they really don't sound like anyone else. The Helpers are the awesomely-named Australian sisters Adrienne and Bethany Sneed and drummer Khattie Quinones. They will be touring the Western part of the US this month behind I'll Have What She's Having, leaving a trail of stripey stockings, dolls parts and stuffed rabbits in their wake. Break open yr glass unicorn bank for show money and catch them if you can.

Something borrowed (from Jon)


Magazine - Real Life (Caroline)

The sound of first wave UK punk in transition. Howard Devoto stayed in the Buzzcocks just long enough to co-write "Orgasm Addict" and the Spiral Scratch EP before starting the slightly artier and poppier Magazine, which spat in the eyes of genre-mongers by being resolutely punk, post-punk and new wave at the same time. "The Light Pours Out of Me" thunders and shimmers and spews lightning bolts, prophesying the imminent rise of a band whose name has become increasingly difficult to drop without sounding like a tool (starts with "Joy," ends with "Division"). "My Tulpa" is the best queer S&M anthem you've never heard: "You can touch yourself anytime/ I am so wretched--you are so fetching/ Stop smiling at me--treat me unpleasantly." For real.

Something blue


Vincent Delerm - s/t (tot Ou tard)

Delerm's enunciation is so slow and crystalline you can use it to teach yrself French! Or at least, learn how to sound real, real suave and whisper things like, "J'espere qu'y aura des elephants," which I think basically means, "I hope that it will have elephants." Don't we all? Most tracks are hushed and stately and wistful--so much so that even when the piano kicks up-tempo they keep a patina of sadness to them, as if recorded inside an empty cabaret where all of the bar stools are knocked over and the counter is sticky with spilled wine. But his newer CD has a song on it called "Veruca Salt et Frank Black." !

Quote of the year

"I do practice homosexuality. If you read the AFA website you’ll find that out. Although actually, I think I’ve gotten quite good at it. I wouldn’t say I was practicing anymore."

-Jack Kenny

Let them eat transparent marketing gimmicks

File under STOP EXPLOITING MY FAVORITE MUSIC, FUCKERS:

Sofia Coppola has been hard at work since bringing us the racism-lite of Lost in Translation--a brave, unflinching film about Scarlett Johansson in her panties and the inherent weirdness of Japanese people. This month, hemorrhaging attention and currency, Coppola is finally wrapping her years-in-the-making pet biopic project on Marie Antoinette. In her panic to appear relevant, Coppola has not only swept the Stupid-Ass Casting Awards ‘06 by signing up cousin Jason Schwartzman for King Louis XVI, she's made the most laughable, incomprehensible, quaaludes-induced teaser of recent memory. It's one thing to try to modernize shit up. But grafting New Order's "Age of Consent" onto standard Merchant-Ivory period piece footage isn't subversive, it's awkward and lazy and tossed-off, as if Coppola got wasted with her trailers editor one night and slurred in passing, "Lesss make it rilly new wave, knamean?" Furthermore, when I hear "Age of Consent" I do not want to think of Kirsten Dunst pouting and running around in wigs and panniers.

Maybe Sof thought that casting Marianne Faithfull as Queenie Marie's mom got her a free pass on whoring out the genius band of her choice, to say nothing of stealing the film's title font off the cover of Never Mind the Bollocks. In any case, I can't wait to see how the final soundtrack turns out. X-Ray Spex for the coronation, perhaps, and Gang of Four for the sex scenes?

Orphans of the storm

The bookstore of heaven was even more fluffy clouds 'n cherubs than usual yesterday. This time I think I actually heard a couple of trumpet fanfares & harp glissandos. I was in the back doing mailorders, conserving tape and reusing packaging cardboard like the faithful employee that I am, when I heard some nervous rustling on yonder side of the saloon-type doors. I look up and there is Don Who Works In The Front, he of the icy frown and blinkless stare that sizes up mainstreamish customers and implicitly snarks, "Wouldn't you really be happier at a Barnes & Noble?" Dude is formidable, spectral--like Dick Cheney or a funnel cloud on the horizon. But he's standing there, and I'm meeting his gaze with knocking knees, enjoying my last few moments of life before the evisceration that is sure to come, when all that comes out of his mouth is, "Hey, do you have any music videos?" I am like, "Guhwha?" And in return he confides, "Because I have all of these Siouxsie & the Banshees videos, and I could copy them for you."

So this dude and I, this scary, inscrutable Cheney tornado et moi, we have an intense fanfession for a good half an hour in the back of the store. We talk Circle Jerks and Nina Hagen, the Velvets and Veruca Salt, the Turf Club and Hammersmith Palais and stalking Puffy AmiYumi in alleys. I am ready for Johnny Thunders, but when he hand grenades Tracy + the Plastics I am blindsided, gaping fish-mouthed as he explains, "I'm so bored with boy bands, all I really listen to now are girls." I knew this place was punk rock; I just didn't know it was running a distro from my heart.

Donna Gaines knows what's going on here, this joy of stumbling across a subcultural sibling in yr midst. We are a family, a tribe of misfits and shut-ins united only by the strange creed that music is the answer. When she speaks in a preacher's tones of fandom as religion, that is no metaphor she is swinging, but the stained glass window truth.

Weaponry Listens to Rip-offs

I liked Art Brut a lot more when they were called Huggy Bear. Compare, contrast, imagine them artificially birthed, Sex Pistols-style, in a top secret A&R meeting circa March 2005, with a couple of 2nd gen. Malcolm McLarens as midwives:

McLaren #1: So who're we going to steal a sound from, then? I'm thinking somebody early 90s, cheeky, sexy, simply dripping with credibility.

McLaren #2: How about Pulp?

M1: No no no, too posh...think cruder.

M2: Bis?

M1: Too obscure.

M2: Heavenly?

M1: Too twee.

M2: Huggy Bear?

M1: Yes! Brilliant! That's exactly it! Only we'll have to siphon out all of the politics and feminism and queer business, kids don't go in for that sort of thing nowadays. And stuff up the empty bits with some musical trend to make it more now, d'you know what I'm saying?

M2: Sprechstimme is going to be terribly hot this year. Look at Bloc Party and the new Hold Steady promos. We could have the lead singer prattle and yell declaratively quite a bit--I'm thinking, "I'VE SEEN HER NAKED," I'm thinking, "THIS IS NOT IRONY."

M1: I love it, I love it. And maybe do some confusing meta-satire about the art world, like those Franz Ferdinand lads.

M2: Why not name the whole group something arty? Like...Bauhaus? Oh wait, that's taken...er, how about Dada? Fauvism? Rococo? Art Brut?

M1: Art Brut, yes, that's perfect! Nigel, I'm giving us both a raise.

Hi-hat heat

KRS drops the Gossip single "Standing in the Way of Control" from their LP to be released 1/24. It's been nudged away from the raucous, down-tuned, discolicious early version they toured with more than a year ago, but dammit if any other band can beckon this kind of rich sound from a single guitar, drum kit & voice (I guess it helps when the voice in question belongs to a vocal genius & human hurricane). Listen for Nathan's guitar line to go all Carrie Brownstein 3/4 of the way through--liquid downstroke eighth notes & slides, like guava nectar for yr parched throat.

Threshold of revelation

I am not well. That thing, called functioning--I can't remember how to do it. When you find yrself listening to LCD Soundsystem at 11:07 in the morning and staring at a box of Kleenex, something is wrong. When you have a dream about reading a press release for a book that does not exist on the queer subculture of 18th century English taverns, and you are not Eve K. Sedgwick, something is royally ass-wonked. But once upon a time last week, when I was in DC, I went to some shows. They were awesome. Like, Princess Seraphina awesome. They are also closing soon, so if you are Metro-side, partake.

Mark Seliger @ Govinda
Go for Cindy Sherman, a be-Hedwig'ed J.C. Mitchell and D. Bowie looking immortal (though not in the same shot) rather than naked supermodels. Bowie has a giant spider pin on his lapel and that unmistakable, "Fie, I left my gloves at the molly house" brooding gaze. Govinda is pretty much all music-related photography all the time, and the dude at the door is totes friendly, so it's a safe bet all year 'round.

PostSecret @ Old Staples
The largest to-date showcase of Frank Warren's project, which invites people to write down their true, unconfessed secrets on 4" by 6" postcards and mail them to his Germantown, MD address. The old Staples building has cards hung up in plastic sleeves on fishing line, tacked to walls, and dangling in bunches from the ceiling. The result is like a revelatory, somber and very crowded wake, with everybody trying their best not to cry.

Perestroika

Stop moving.

What do we do now that the millennium isn't approaching anymore, but receding? It passed by the window an hour ago and the 1986 Toyota we're all riding in has about a thimbleful of gas left and its muffler is dragging on the ground. Even if we strained at our seatbelts enough to turn around and look back, all we'd see would be dim lights on the horizon. Ignes fatui. Millennial offal aflame. How can we stop moving when we have to go forwards to stay where we are?

The guitar weighed fifty pounds if it weighed an ounce. I called it Moby Dick. I played it on my bed, sans strap, sans amp, like the girls in All Over Me. But barre chords learned in 90-degree sexually confused summers do not stick in the brain so much as slide, amble and meander. Humidity is no good for steel strings or post-adolescent resolve.

Eventually, I had to give Moby Dick back to its original owner, a weed-addled, greasy-haired sub-punk named Robert who had made me cry years earlier in our high school cafeteria by insisting that Juliet died pregnant. "They did fuck," he had reasoned, pointing to the illustrated cover of his copy of the play and Little Lady J's suspicious paunch as evidence. "Either the chick is way fat or Romeo knocked her up."

I resented this. Romeo and Juliet did not fuck. People in bad TV movies fucked. Soccer Team Captain Ethan and Third Period English Jessica fucked--at parties, and (it was rumored) in the Math & Science wing stairwell next to the Coke machine. But what Romeo and Juliet did was too beautiful to have a name.

"She is not fat. It's just the way her dress is. That's what Renaissance fashion was like. And besides, you don't start showing when you've only been pregnant for, like, 48 hours."

"Whatever," said Robert, fellating a Twinkie. "Dude knocked her up."

Pogo Pazz & Jop

BEST MUSIC OF 2005

Albums
1. The Garter Belts, Drunk With Katie Couric
2. Shantalia, ABCexYZ (Remixes)
3. His Majesty's Knickers, Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria
4. Kizzmet, Dude Jacked My Shit
5. Mares Eat Oats, Rancid Sushi Bender
6. Nigel Fellowes, That Overhead Light Fixture is Terribly Bright (Import)
7. Rumpwax, Kissing Corpses
8. Mixmaster Liquify, Big Dick Stylee
9. The Pop Stars, International Blind Dateline
10. Marcel, Do Chomp Head, Thorax & Abdomen

Singles
1. Veronyca feat. DJ Cranapple 57 1/2, "My Booty My Business"
2. Beauty Pageant Contestants, "Lord Alfred Douglas"
3. Hans von Hans, "Ich hasse sie" (Import)
4. The Dishwasher Repairmen, "Schrodinger's Cat Looks Dead to Me"
5. The Rolls Royces, "(I Love It When You) Change My Oil"
6. Christian Science Breeding Room, "Bitch, Do My Taxes"
7. Tepid Breast Milk Rebellion, "Conventional Wisdom Suggests"
8. Fillet She Oh, "Kiss It Make It Better"
9. The Readymades, "Dada by Dawn"
10. Dancetyranny, Is It Just the Coke Or Does That Doorknob Have Eyes?

See y'alls next year!